Render Layers Without Displaying Them In 3D Viewport
Yes, this is possible, however there might be better ways of handling this.

Disable Lock layers to scene in the 3D view > Header.

Now you can set the Scene layers in Properties > Renderlayers to the layers you want to render (in this case, 1, 2, and 3)



Note that only layer 1 is visible in the viewport.